Actions for selected content:

Send content to

To send content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about sending content to .

To send content items to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about sending to your Kindle.

Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services
Please confirm that you accept the terms of use.

Close ties between government authorities and private firms are often the object of suspicion, but a systematic understanding of when they arise is still missing. This article uses machine learning tools to analyze a large dataset of public contracts from across Europe, in order to identify the conditions under which close connections, defined both in terms of repeated interaction, as well as geographical dispersion, appear. Previous theoretical results suggest that close ties should emerge as an enforcement mechanism in settings characterized by weak outside enforcement, such as those involving corruption. Results from random forest models show support for this hypothesis, along with identifying other structural determinants of the outcome. The most striking finding is that even after accounting for numerous potential confounders, major differences in terms of average diversity levels between countries persist, and these differences map onto an indicator of governance quality and corruption, but not at all on income per capita. These findings point to the centrality of the structure of interactions between private and public actors for understanding governance outcomes.

Recommend this

Email your librarian or administrator to recommend adding this to your organisation's collection.